The user interface of electronic devices often includes showing a list or two-dimensional array of items that belong to a group of items within a given display area. The display area can be the complete display of the device or a window on the display of the device. The groups of items can for example be files within a folder, menu items within a menu structure or similarly organized groups of items. The user interfaces are constructed such that a user can navigate to a particular item of interest and thereafter open or activate the item of interest. The item of interest could for example be a program that is started, a function that is activated or a file that is opened.
Since display area is limited, particularly in mobile devices, it is often not possible to display all of the items of a group inside the available display area. Therefore, the list or two-dimensional array is often presented in a scrollable form, with the items at the end(s) of the one- or two-dimensional array initially not being visible. Thus, the user will need to scroll in order to reach the initially not shown items. Further, in mobile devices that operate without the use of input from a mouse or the like, one predetermined item in the array is initially highlighted and the user needs to repeatedly press a navigation key or the like to scroll through the items in the array to reach a desired item. The ever-increasing complexity of mobile devices has caused the number of items within a group to increase significantly over the past years. This means that the users have on average to do a lot more scrolling in order to reach a desired item.
Therefore, there is a desire to reduce the amount of scrolling that is required to select items from groups of items that are shown on the displays of electronic devices.